


Be Still, My Tongue

by astudyinotters753



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Assumed Character Death, Canon-Typical Violence, Harry Hart Lives, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Slightly unreliable narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:06:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22841455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astudyinotters753/pseuds/astudyinotters753
Summary: He forgets all the parts of a fugue.It’s November again by the time Eggsy returns once more to England.  When he steps off the bullet train at Kingsman HQ, he thinks the air smells like snow.  It’s not quite cold enough yet to wrap the world in white, but as he dawdles around the grounds, putting off the impending awkwardness that can only come from being summoned to Arthur’s office for the first time, he finds that he just wants to lay down against a tree and let the snow swallow him.A few droplets of rain fall from the single, fat cloud overhead.  The first plops hard against the scabbed arch of his eyebrow, and when he turns his face towards the sky to receive the rest of what can only be a lover’s touch, the rest of the raindrops ice over where they touch his skin.  It’s fitting, he thinks, being able to freeze the world he touches.He forgets all the parts of a fugue.He forgets everything that isn’t the cold.(Inspired by the song "Be Still, My Tongue" by the artist Snorri Hallgrímsson)
Relationships: Harry Hart | Galahad/Gary "Eggsy" Unwin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 59





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you are interested in the song that inspired this story, here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dC3Aogn2mw

Harry Hart is many things. Refined and poised and well-put together, he strikes the perfect image of a gentleman. He knows what he looks like, knows the image he cuts in his carefully crafted bespoke suits and impeccably coiffed hair. Knows that the lines that crinkle around his eyes and the corners of his mouth help him appear as nothing more than a well-groomed, middle-aged businessman. _Harmless_ , the back of Eggsy’s mind supplies. Remembering how Harry carried himself the first time they met, all clean lines of casual poise, outfitted with a brolly in hand, Eggsy remembers how harmless he’d thought Harry was. 

Today, as Eggsy watches Harry dispatch the congregation of the South Glade Mission Church, he is startled by Harry’s duplicity. Sure, he’s seen that nasty spark of something distinctly non-gentlemanlike – there’s no way he would have shouted at Eggsy back in the Black Prince if he didn’t have a bit of anger in him – but seeing Harry’s unruffled composure melt into a raw, unbridled rage takes his breath away. It doesn’t take long before chaos erupts around Harry in the church, and he’s almost escaped through the door when he turns on his heel, pulls a gun, and blows away the woman who had been screaming obscenities at him. It’s subtle and barely-there, but Eggsy knows Harry, can pinpoint the exact moment when his autonomy is compromised. And so, with a barely perceptible intake of breath, Eggsy is forced to watch as something in his mentor shifts, and all of Harry’s scarcely contained ferocity breaks free. 

What follows, Eggsy can only describe as gruesomely beautiful, for Harry’s rampage is just as impressive as it is horrible. He fights with a fluid certainty that can only be borne from years and years of practice, and as he settles into his groove, Harry blooms into the epitome of lethality, the likes of which Eggsy has never seen. And so, it is on a perfectly pleasant summer day when Harry Hart dances with death only to emerge, bloodied and horrified, as the sole survivor of his own massacre. 

His wake of destruction ends, not with a whimper but with a bang, and Harry is gone before his body hits the ground.

oOo

The finger’s worth of Harry’s special reserve, single-malt whiskey Eggsy shoots in the aftermath burns brighter than it has any right to. It licks a line of fire down the back of his throat to pool uncomfortably thick and hot in his stomach. He’d drunk the alcohol more on instinct than anything else, his hands shaking as they reached for any remnant of Harry to grasp. He stands, unmoored, in the empty space of Harry’s office and forces his lungs to take in shaky, gasping breaths. The edge of his vision blurs, and as Eggsy pitches sideways to catch himself against the messy top of Harry’s desk, he feels something inside himself shatter. For the first time in his life, Eggsy Unwin finds himself truly alone and awash in the silence that wraps around him.

oOo

Like Harry, Eggsy grows cold too. It happens so suddenly that he doesn’t notice it at first. It’s only when he’s answered the summons to Kingsman’s HQ and Chester King collapses atop the table in front of him that he realizes he’s shaking. The cold that has seeped through his entire being barely has time to take root before he’s pushing forward again, fleeing down the corridors towards Merlin’s domain with Chester’s implant and phone clutched in a death grip. And then, Roxy has him pinned in the corner, her gun pointed at the spot between his eyebrows, and Eggsy can only manage a strangled and breathy attempt at pleading before Merlin steps in and barks orders for her to stand down. “Please,” he’d asked her, begging for what she believed was his life. He never tells her that he was hoping that she’d pull the trigger instead. 

He meant what he’d told Chester. He’d much rather be with Harry, thanks. 

oOo

June bleeds into July which melts into August. The world around him is boiling hot, boasting record-breaking high temperatures and a workload that won’t stop. So, Eggsy bottles it up and ignores the cold that is now an uncomfortable constant in his bones. He goes on mission after mission, his briefing dossiers all blurring together in the haze that settles around him. It lasts for three months before he ends up in Kentucky as a personal favor to Kingsman’s American branch. 

He’s scratched from duty the moment his shoes touch foreign soil, and under the too-thick heat of the summer sun, he crumbles. With no immediate ties to his duty as a Kingsman, no mounting pressure to keep himself composed as he struts around and forces himself to answer to his new designation, Eggsy drifts. 

He’s haunted by Harry. Everyone around him can see that. He’s pale and wan and despite his neatly pressed suits and perfectly coiffed hair and the ever-present Rainmaker he holds just _so,_ Eggsy knows that everyone can see the tremors that wrack his frame. Knows that everyone can see how fragile he is, can see how he shakes apart at the seams every night, can see how he takes needle and thread to his brokenness every morning, doing his best to sew himself into some semblance of a good and faithful and functioning knight. Knows how when everyone looks at him and calls him Galahad, that they only see what they’d all lost. Knows that despite everything he’s done since V-Day, Eggsy is not the same man his mentor was. Eggsy will never be the same man his mentor was. Eggsy will never be anything but a stifled echo of Harry Hart. 

oOo

He ends up at the church. 

He hadn’t meant to go there. Hadn’t meant to deviate from the mission that Merlin had pressed into his palms not six hours earlier. But, when Bors had transitioned from welcoming him to reassigning him with some mandated time off in the same breath, Eggsy had found himself adrift. And so, he wandered aimlessly down the roads and sidewalks until he stumbled upon a too-new building in an all-too-familiar town.

The church looks much more modern than it had when Harry had arrived at its doorstep only months ago. The community of South Glade, Kentucky had rebuilt itself quickly – sprouting a new congregation in a perfectly, pristine chapel seemingly overnight. _It’s not fair_ , Eggsy thinks – and not for the first time – that these horrible, hateful people have been allowed to thrive and grow and fester in the same world where Harry Hart is dead.

The cold in his bones rankles as he freezes on the burning asphalt. It bubbles up inside him higher and higher until it threatens to spill over, cold and dangerous, from the fissures in his soul. He itches to give in to the violent whispers that curl lovingly in his ear, to let himself follow in Harry’s blood-soaked footprints and bring an entire congregation of bigoted parishioners to their knees. He wants to lose himself to the brutality of it, to the mindlessness of it. Wants to write his own sadistic symphony of suffering. 

An Ode to Harry Hart, he’d call it, whispering the name only when he finishes and turns to survey the grisly wasteland that surrounds him. As he stands, tall and proud with blood marring the hungry glint of his teeth, he listens to the cacophony his own viciousness has written. Like this, he can be more than the faint echo of Harry he fears he has become. Like this, he and Harry have written a song of agony, voices rising up across time and space to twist and twine and fuse once more. Like this, he becomes the second voice of Harry’s fugue. 

He ends up at the church. 

He stares at an angry red bruise that has bloomed on the concrete and lets the music of his fantasy fade around him. 

It isn’t a love song. It can’t be a love song. It won’t ever be a love song. 

He doesn’t go in.

oOo

All in all, he’s scratched from the Kingsman active duty roster for two months. When he finally passes muster at the end of November, he immediately departs for what is supposed to be a four-month undercover mission. When he returns ahead of schedule in mid-February, England is firmly entrenched in winter. Eggsy greets it with a smile and with a whisper of thanks and sinks gratefully into her chilled embrace. He feels at home in the cold, now; has made peace with her pervasive hold on him and has all but invited her to stay. 

oOo

He moves into Harry’s house. 

It happens as most things do for Eggsy, which is to say, he does it suddenly and all at once. One minute he’s feeling at home in the Kingsman dormitories, and the next Merlin is delivering him and all of his earthly belongings to Harry’s doorstep. The house smells musty and stale when he steps in, and dust glints everywhere in the afternoon’s cold sunlight. Merlin hands him a set of keys for the door, squeezes his shoulder briefly, and leaves him to get settled in without speaking. 

When the door clicks shut behind him, shock worms uneasily down his spine. He’s nearly ten months removed from V-Day, and he feels like he should be handling things better than he is. Things being Harry’s house. _His_ house, now, if the small pile of askew papers on the kitchen table are anything to go by. Kingsman’s legal team had apologized about making him wait so long to take possession of the thing, as if inheriting Harry’s house had been something he both wanted and expected. And yet, even though it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity he knows he should jump on, the only thing Eggsy wants out of this house is to come home to it with Harry alive.

But Harry, like everything else in his house, is dead. And Eggsy cannot come home to him. So, he does what he must and preserves it as best as he can. Changes only what must be changed. He stocks the refrigerator and places his shop-brand tea beside Harry’s fancy tin in the kitchen cupboards. He adds a single, novelty mug to Harry’s china hutch. Two generic paperback spy-novels move into Harry’s bookshelf, and his toiletries fill up a single drawer in Harry’s spare bathroom. He unpacks as few of his belongings as he needs to be comfortable and leaves the rest – still packed into one, lumpy suitcase – in the basement. 

The one, lone change he allows himself is the acquisition of a particular, beige cardigan that hangs massively on his slowly withering frame. Most nights, he wraps himself up in its plush comfort, and firmly prevents himself from thinking about how beautiful and soft and _kissable_ Harry had looked in it. 

Around him, everything else changes, but he finds refuge here, in the house that amounts to little less than an empty mausoleum. He dusts all of the butterfly cases on Sundays and talks to Mr. Pickle every morning and keeps the door to Harry’s office firmly closed. He clips his own front-page newspaper articles and they find a home in the side-table drawer in the guest bedroom where Eggsy sleeps. They do not join Harry’s in a place of pride on the wall. He still won’t touch the office door.

oOo

When he goes away for another deep-undercover mission in June, Eggsy takes the cardigan with him. He misses his sister’s fourth birthday party. Misses the coronation of the next Arthur. Misses the anniversary of V-Day and the toast that Merlin insists all agents drink to mark it. Sitting alone in a bunker in Russia, Eggsy nurses a fifth of cheap whiskey and falls asleep with bloodshot eyes and salty cheeks. 

He wakes with the cardigan draped over his shoulders like a blanket. 

He misses much more than he lets on.

oOo

He forgets all the parts of a fugue.

It’s November again by the time Eggsy returns once more to England. When he steps off the bullet train at Kingsman HQ, he thinks the air smells like snow. It’s not quite cold enough yet to wrap the world in white, but as he dawdles around the grounds, putting off the impending awkwardness that can only come from being summoned to Arthur’s office for the first time, he finds that he just wants to lay down against a tree and let the snow swallow him. 

A few droplets of rain fall from the single, fat cloud overhead. The first plops hard against the scabbed arch of his eyebrow, and when he turns his face towards the sky to receive the rest of what can only be a lover’s touch, the rest of the raindrops ice over where they touch his skin. It’s fitting, he thinks, being able to freeze the world he touches. 

He forgets all the parts of a fugue.

He forgets everything that isn’t the cold.

oOo

Arthur’s meeting does not go well.

He’s shuffled into the room by a nervous looking Roxy and a chatty Percival, and he’s so numb from everything that he doesn’t think anything of their unusual, anxious behavior until long after the door is opened and he’s been pressed forward far enough that his shoes scuff against the side of the solid looking desk in the middle of the room. 

Here, too, he is haunted by Harry. Haunted by the shame and the guilt and the sheer embarrassment that still eats at him – haunted by these tangible remnants of his last test. His final interaction with Harry erupts ugly and raucous in his mind, the last words Harry said to him playing on repeat, punctuated with the crisp, deafening bang of Valentine’s gun. 

He looks at Arthur’s desk and sees Harry there, perched carefully behind it. He looks exactly as Eggsy had imagined he’d look if he’d somehow survived being shot in the face, his refined appearance somehow enhanced by the leather eyepatch that darkens the hollow where his left eye used to be. The specter calls his name. Smiles warmly at him from behind the desk. Offers him a small congratulations at his most recent success. 

Eggsy knows by now not to trust the apparitions. Knows not to talk to the million versions of Harry he sees flit through the peripherals of his vision day after day. Knows not to reach out across the no-mans-land marked by the cluttered top of this desk in an attempt to touch—Harry is not his to have.

So Eggsy sinks into himself, wraps the stretched-out cardigan more firmly around himself, and flees from the room. 

oOo

They find him, three weeks later, after overhearing an alert for a breaking and entering call as reported from a private cemetery on the outskirts of Stanhope Mews. Somehow, it’s Merlin that is sent to retrieve him, arriving before the local authorities get a chance to. He bursts in, his face as stormy and thunderous as the night sky. He wants to tear into Eggsy, wants to rip him into tiny pieces and check him into a mandated six-month stay in medical in the hopes that perhaps he’s finally ready to take advantage of the extensive team of doctors Kingsman keeps on reserve. When he finally sees Eggsy – takes in the picture he paints – all that anger fizzles unsatisfied into nothingness. His breath hitches as his throat constricts, and he is forced to stop his charge mid-step. 

Eggsy is asleep. Passed out drunk with the half-consumed bottle of Harry’s favorite whiskey loosely clutched in his slack hand. He’s draped against a shiny, marble tombstone, head tipped back over the top lip of the slab. His skin looks mottled and grey, and the white shirt he’d been wearing has turned translucent with the rain. 

He looks like a statue of a fallen angel. Looks like he’s been carved from smooth, cold marble by the hammer and chisel of a master. Looks like the two points of color that have not yet faded from his cheeks have been rubbed to warmth by the gentle swipe of a thumb. If it wasn’t for the glass bottle and the discarded suit jacket strewn to the side, Merlin thinks that Eggsy would have never been found. 

oOo

_He’s not there, lad_ , he thinks he hears someone whisper, somewhere deep in the haze of his fever dream. _Ye know it in your heart. He cannot possibly be there._

oOo

More voices come to him in the dark. He thinks he hears Roxy at some point – thinks he can pick the cadence of her crying apart from the rest – but mostly, he thinks that the sea of words he can’t quite hear properly washes over him in a din. 


	2. Chapter 2

Eventually, he dreams.

The kaleidoscope haze fades to black and he coalesces barefoot in the middle of a forest. The earth is soft and warm under his feet, and the green growth surrounding him has been worn down into a marked path. When footprints bloom in the dirt beside him, Eggsy cannot help but follow as they lead him further into the unknown.

He walks for what feels like days. The trees loop over and over again, and just when he feels like he should give up and sit somewhere and wait it out, the footprints disappear and the dirt underfoot yields to grass. He hovers on the precipice of the forest for eons and watches as a gentle breeze turns the field of wildflowers before him into a veritable sea of color.

 _Come to me, my dear boy_ , he hears, turning his head in an attempt to catch more words from the kind wind as it brushes across his cheek. _You know where to find me, if only you come to look._

oOo

He goes looking. 

After what feels like a lifetime of hesitating, he finally wanders into the field. Along the cut of the horizon a figure rises, and Eggsy is drawn to it like a beacon. He runs forward and the wind blows along with him. _Eggsy_ it calls to him. _My darling, you’re so close._ The world throws him forward, and in a few, broad bounds, he’s close enough to the figure to see it for what it is: a middle-aged man dressed in a pristine, bespoke, double-breasted suit. 

He pauses some five meters from him and cold quakes through all of his extremities. Slowly, the man turns to look at him, the left side of his face shadowed by a force he cannot see. “Hello, Eggsy,” he says, smiling easily at him. “I knew you would find me.”

At his words, all of the air is stolen from Eggsy’s lungs. The cold comes rushing back in, snow piling up in mounds around him. He’s encapsulated in a perfect, crystal wonderland, marred only by the faerie ring of warmth that radiates like a halo around him. “Harry,” he murmurs, the name dropping unbidden from his traitorous mouth before he can catch it.

One word is apparently all it takes for the illusion to crack and flake apart. Snow blizzards around him, blowing so fiercely that for the few moments it rages on, he cannot see anything but a never-ending wall of white. 

oOo

When the white fades, he’s back in the frozen clearing, Harry still lingering in his bubble of warmth. Eggsy never thought he’d be jealous of an insect, but when a butterfly manifests out of nowhere and alights on Harry’s cheek, he is consumed by it.

“You can do it if you want to,” Harry says, turning to look at Eggsy.

“Do what?” Eggsy asks.

“Touch me,” Harry answers. “In fact, I’d be very disappointed if you don’t.”

Slowly, Eggsy reaches out, his hand trembling. Gently, his palm finds Harry’s cheek, his fingers spanning out to cradle the side of his neck. He can feel the gentle thrumming of Harry’s pulse under his fingertips, and his mouth falls open at the sheer pleasure of it. “Warm,” he blurts, brushing his thumb over Harry’s cheekbone. “You’re _warm_.”

“Of course I’m warm,” Harry says with a scoff. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Eggsy snatches his hand back and looks away from him. _Because you’re not here_ , he wants to say. _Because this is the only way I’ll ever get to have you_. 

The words eventually melt on his tongue and escape his mouth. “You’re dead,” he finally admits, wrapping his arms securely around himself. “It’s because you’re dead.”

When Harry reaches out and wraps his hand around Eggsy’s wrist, a brand blisters up underneath his hold. “I’m not dead, Eggsy,” he says, gently, as if Eggsy is no more than a skittish and feral creature that will spook at even the happiest of revelations. “I wouldn’t be able to touch you if I was dead.”

Eggsy trembles beneath him. “Don’t lie to me, Harry,” he says. “I saw it happen. You died, and I had to bury you.”

Harry’s face softens as he pulls Eggsy to his chest. He holds Eggsy still as he breaks apart and cries with his head pressed to Harry’s clavicle. Here, too, Harry is wearing that sweater he loves to remember him in, and it’s so soft under his cheek. 

“Don’t leave me, Harry,” Eggsy pleads, his voice so soft that Harry can barely hear him. “Please don’t leave me alone again.

“Oh, darling,” he murmurs against the golden crown of Eggsy’s head. “I would give everything to be with you again. I don’t ever want to let you go.”

“What are you saying?” Eggsy asks after a moment, pulling back just enough to take in the soft expression that warms Harry’s face. 

“A kiss is pressed to his forehead in lieu of a proper answer. “I will tell you eventually, my dear boy,” Harry offers. “But here and now is not the place.”

The cold shock of confusion washes over Eggsy as Harry steps away from him. “I don’t understand,” he says. “What’s going on, Harry? Where are you going?”

Harry tosses one more smile at him before he’s engulfed by the horizon. _Come and find me_ , he says from somewhere beyond the ether. _You know where to look_.

oOo

He goes looking and the white nothingness gives away beneath him.

He falls.

And then, he wakes.


	3. Chapter 3

One white wasteland is exchanged for another; his beloved, plush snowscape for the bland, bereft walls of the Kingsman medical wing. When he presses at the call button beside his bed, he is barely able to stifle his surprise as Merlin appears almost immediately in the doorway.

“Eggsy,” he says, fingers tapping at his ever-present clipboard. “You look like shit, lad.”

A laugh catches in Eggsy’s throat. “I feel like shit, guv,” he replies. “What happened?”

Merlin stiffens and frowns at him. “What do you remember?” he asks.

“Not much,” Eggsy says. Remember seeing Harry’s ghost in Arthur’s office. Remember running off. The rest is mostly just a blur until I got here – don’t remember anything concrete after that.”

“Harry’s ghost?” Merlin repeats. “What do you mean, lad?”

Eggsy falls quiet for a moment. “I know it sounds totally bonkers,” he says. “But I’ve been seeing Harry’s ghost for months now. Usually it doesn’t bother me much, but for some reason, this time it did.”

Merlin considers him carefully over the top edge of his clipboard before stepping forward and sinking down into the single, lone chair beside Eggsy’s hospital bed. They can both feel how tense the air is between them; how thick and heavy it is under the weight of words yet unspoken. Eventually, Merlin is the one who breaks the silence. “Have you told anyone about this yet?” he asks, his voice far gentler than Eggsy had ever thought it could be. 

“No,” Eggsy replies, his hands curling in fists around the edge of his sparse covers. “I was too afraid.”

“Afraid that people would think you’re mad?” Merlin prods. 

Eggsy shakes his head. “Nah. I’m proper mad, guv. Know that already,” Eggsy breathes. “I was scared of being forced on pills. Was worried—” 

The rest of his reply is lost in the abyss that still separates them. 

“Of?” Merlin finally asks. 

The apples of Eggsy’s cheeks color furiously. “I didn’t wanna stop,” he eventually offers. 

“You didn’t want to forget him,” Merlin comments.

Slowly, Eggsy nods his head. “I never want to forget him,” he confirms. 

“Me neither, lad,” Merlin agrees, rising from the chair. “Me neither.”

Eggsy is asleep before Merlin leaves the room and finds himself blissfully unaware of the string of curses that trail Merlin as he storms through the hallway to Arthur’s office. He is similarly oblivious to the explosive tirade that is destined for the great King himself. Safely tucked into his own little corner of medical, Eggsy is completely removed from the way Harry Hart’s face blanches and crumbles under Merlin’s wrath. 

oOo

When Eggsy wakes again, it is Harry that is perched next to his bedside. Both of his large, calloused hands are wrapped delicately around one of Eggsy’s, and it makes him feel small.

Eggsy spares no more than a passing glance at Harry before he turns to face Merlin, hovering just behind what he thinks is an empty chair. “It’s happening again, guv,” he says solemnly. 

Resolutely, Merlin shakes his head. “Nae, lad,” he says. “This time he’s real.”

oOo

“Real?” Eggsy parrots, eyes snapping back to Harry’s face. 

“I’d say so, my dear boy,” Harry says, his hands squeezing Eggsy’s just enough to get his attention. “I wouldn’t be able to touch you if I wasn’t.”

“You said that in my dream,” he admits carefully. “At least, I’m pretty sure I was dreaming.”

“I’d imagine you were, Eggsy,” Merlin says. “You’ve been in a coma for the last three days. Arthur here has been keeping you company for most of it.”

“You were here?” Eggsy asks, digging his fingers tensely into the palm of Harry’s hand. 

“Of course I was,” Harry replies. “As if I could be anywhere else than beside you.”

Hearing Harry speak again after so long rattles everything inside him that he’s precariously packed away over the last year and a half. His voice is so soft and gentle and so, _so_ warm that Eggsy feels something in that already perturbed stack crack and split and _slide_ — and then the whole thing is coming down to crash into a wreck around him.

“But you left me,” he accuses, before he can stop himself, flinching even as the words have left his lips. “You said all those horrible things, and then you left me.”

Harry, sagely, remains silent. 

“I didn’t think you’d ever come back,” Eggsy continues. “And then you died, and you stayed gone, and they gave me your _house._ I never thought you was gonna come back. Thought you’d realized that you were better off without me.”

Harry’s only response to this outburst is to stroke his thumb carefully across the top of Eggsy’s knuckles.

“And now you’re gonna go away again,” Eggsy sighs. “Might as well just get it over with, yeah?”

“My dear boy,” Harry finally murmurs, sounding just as wrecked as Eggsy feels. “I have moved heaven and earth to come back to you. How did you think that I could ever leave you alone?” 

“Because they always do,” Eggsy whispers back, furious. “You was just waiting for a reason to go an’ I gave it to you. Let you down like I always do. So you left. Can’t say I really blame you, Harry. I would have left me, too.”

Harry says his name like it’s something worth cherishing and wipes his tears away before they can fall. “You didn’t let me down,” he says sternly, pausing for a breath before he continues. “And I can’t promise you that I’ll always come back to you, darling, because we both know that wouldn’t be true given our line of work,” he says.

“But?” Eggsy asks hopefully, nuzzling his cheek into Harry’s palm with an open earnestness that makes Harry’s heart ache. 

“But,” he continues, “I can promise you that, as long as I have breath in my lungs, I will do everything in my power to see that I come home to you.

“Oh,” he says simply.

“Oh,” Harry repeats back to him, a smile crinkling the corners of his eyes. 

“Oh,” Merlin adds, glowering at them fondly from above Harry’s head. 

“Merlin” Harry huffs, “won’t you be a dear and give us a bit of privacy?”

“Eggsy?” Merlin says, addressing him. “Will you be ok if I leave, lad?”

“Yeah, guv,” he replies. “I don’t think I’m seeing ghosts anymore, so I’m fine.”

“Very well then,” Merlin says, offering him a small smile. “I’ll be in my office then. If ye need something, I’m sure the nursing staff would be very happy to provide assistance.”

“The door please, Merlin?” Harry asks, just as he steps away.

“As my king wishes,” Merlin replies, pulling the door shut behind him.

oOo

Silence blankets the room after Merlin’s retreat, and Eggsy can’t quite bring himself to break it – he’s too terrified that if he says anything, that this, too will fall away.

“I know you’re probably still tired, my darling,” Harry says, scooting the chair closer to Eggsy’s bed. “But, I have a few more things I’d like to say to you, if you’ll let me?” 

Smiling, Eggsy nods a silent benediction for Harry to proceed.

And so, Harry tells him all the things he’s been desperate to hear since the day Harry had left him. He learns, in quick succession, that Harry is ardently proud of him – both for his role in stopping Valentine’s massacre and at his ascension as Galahad to the Round Table. He learns that Harry is intensely sorrowful for the hurt and anguish he’d inadvertently caused Eggsy to experience. And finally, he learns that Harry is deeply and hopelessly in love with him.

Harry then, is quick and keen to learn that, by some miracle, Eggsy loves him _back_.

oOo

He’d forgotten all the parts of a fugue.

He’d known that there’s the original voice – the one that sets the primary melody that the rest of the piece will be based off. That was all Harry

He’d also known that there’s a second voice, too – the one that starts the actual fugue and repeats and transposes and continues the melody that has been set for it. Eggsy had been comfortable as this second voice, had taken pride in the ways he’d woven himself into a careful reflection of the man he’d inherited both his moniker and his legacy from. 

He had forgotten, however, that a fugue has three parts. Had forgotten that its final entry is nothing less than the return of the original melody. Had forgotten that the first voice was always destined to come back and slide neatly into place on top of the perfectly orchestrated fantasy that had been ghosting along in its absence. 

He’d forgotten all the parts of a fugue. But, when Harry reaches out and tilts his chin up and presses his dry, soft lips to Eggsy’s own, music flourishes in bright bursts behind his eyelids. 

He cannot forget the way this feels – cannot possibly forget how hot Harry’s skin feels where it’s pressed against his own. Cannot ever forget how it feels to allow Harry heat to overwhelm him. Like Harry, Eggsy grows warm too. And, as he shakes apart and Harry holds him together, Eggsy lets the cold run out of his body. He gives himself over to Harry, fully and without regret. When Harry breaks the kiss to maneuver them so that they both fit in the same hospital bed pressed together from shoulders to knees, Eggsy _melts_. 

“Warm,” Eggsy murmurs drowsily as Harry strokes a hand absentmindedly through his hair. “I feel _warm_.”

“Yes, you do, love” Harry says. “Let’s stay warm together now, shall we?”

oOo

Eggsy Unwin is many things. Exuberant and powerful and a touch rough around the edges, he strikes the perfect image of a chav. He knows what he looks like, knows the image he cuts in his loud jackets and winged trainers. Knows that the dimples in his cheeks help him appear as nothing more than a friendly bit-of-rough from the estates. _Lovely_ , the back of Harry’s mind supplies. Remembering how Eggsy carried himself the first time they went home together, his clothes rumpled, snapback askew from a not-so-briefly shared kiss on the bullet train, Harry remembers how lovely he’d thought Eggsy was.

Today, as Harry watches Eggsy step into his home – _their_ home – for the first time, he is startled by Eggsy’s luminescence. Sure, he’s seen that spark of something joyful – there’s no way he would have proposed they live together if the thought didn’t bring him happiness – but seeing Eggsy’s anxious hesitation melt into comfortable familiarity takes his breath away. It doesn’t take long before tranquility envelops them, and they make quick work of stumbling through the door to toe off their shoes, pushing each other through the house to curl up, together, on the couch. It’s subtle and barely-there, but Harry knows Eggsy, can pinpoint the exact moment when he relaxes. And so, with a barely perceptible intake of breath, Harry is forced to watch as his lover shifts closer against him and smiles, and all of Eggsy’s barely obscured brightness bursts free.

What follows, Harry can only describe as breathtakingly wonderful, for Eggsy’s pleasure is just as stunning as it is sumptuous. He loves with a boundless earnestness that can only be born from someone as tender-hearted as his boy. As they settle into their groove, Eggsy blooms into the epitome of love, the likes of which Harry has never seen. And so, it is on a horribly blistery winter day when Harry Hart dances with Eggsy only to emerge, dizzy and breathless, as one half to what he thinks is a nearly perfect pair. 

Their path to loving each other starts not with a symphony, but with a fugue. And Eggsy is gone on him from the moment Harry calls his name. 

He feels even more strongly now about what he’d told Chester. He’d always much rather be with Harry, thanks. 


End file.
